Terms
In some continental European languages, terms with a christening theme or etymology are preferred (e.g. "baptême" in French, "doop" in Dutch — mostly used in Flanders) or variations on a theme of naïveté and the rite of passage such as a derivation from a term for freshman (e.g. "bizutage" in French, "ontgroening" (de-greening) in Dutch —mostly used in the Netherlands—, "novatada" in Spanish, from "novato", meaning newcomer) or a combination of both, such as in the Finnish "mopokaste" (literally "moped baptism", "moped" being the nickname for freshmen, stemming from the concept that they would be barred from riding a full motorcycle at their age). In Latvian, the word "iesvētības", which literally means "in-blessings", is used, also standing for religious rites of passage, especially confirmation. In Swedish, the term used is "nollning", literally "zeroing". In Portugal, the term "praxe", which literally means "practice" or "habit", is used for freshmen initiation. In the Italian military, instead, the term used was "nonnismo", from "nonno" (literally "grandfather"), a jargon term used for the soldiers who had already served for most of their draft period. A similar equivalent term exists in the Russian military, where a hazing phenomenon knowing as Dedovshchina exists, meaning roughly "grandfather" or the slang term "gramps" (referring to the senior corps of soldiers in their final year of conscription). At education establishments in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, this practice involves existing students baiting or bullying new students and is called Ragging.
Often most or all of the endurance or the more serious ordeal is concentrated in an orgiastic collective session, which may be called hell night, or prolonged to a hell week and/or retreat or camp, sometimes again at the pledge's birthday (e.g. by birthday spanking), but some traditions keep terrorizing pledges over a long period, resembling fagging.
See also: Initiation and Rite of passageRead more about this topic: Chuck Stenzel
Famous quotes containing the word terms:
“One of the most highly valued functions of used parents these days is to be the villains of their children’s lives, the people the child blames for any shortcomings or disappointments. But if your identity comes from your parents’ failings, then you remain forever a member of the child generation, stuck and unable to move on to an adulthood in which you identify yourself in terms of what you do, not what has been done to you.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“My father and I were always on the most distant terms when I was a boy—a sort of armed neutrality, so to speak. At irregular intervals this neutrality was broken, and suffering ensued; but I will be candid enough to say that the breaking and the suffering were always divided up with strict impartiality between us—which is to say, my father did the breaking, and I did the suffering.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Certainly for us of the modern world, with its conflicting claims, its entangled interests, distracted by so many sorrows, so many preoccupations, so bewildering an experience, the problem of unity with ourselves in blitheness and repose, is far harder than it was for the Greek within the simple terms of antique life. Yet, not less than ever, the intellect demands completeness, centrality.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)